


There's Already an Arrow Through Your Heart

by predilection



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:39:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5278790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/predilection/pseuds/predilection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler accidentally gets blasted by the Dino Cupid Charger and Shelby is the first person he sees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's Already an Arrow Through Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a prompt I posted on tumblr after watching the Halloween special: [spoilers for the fic] _Fic where a blast from the Cupid Dino Charger hits Tyler, and Shelby is the first person he sees, but the blast has no effect on him because he's already in love with her~_
> 
> Note: I finished writing this fic before PockySquirrel posted [Draw Back Your Bow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5182430), so any similarities between this story and that one are coincidental. Also, that fic is _really good_ and you should totally check it out!

Kendall put all her strength into trying to pry open Tyler's morpher, and when she couldn't get it to budge, she sighed.

Across from her, Tyler asked, "Is it stuck again?" 

"It appears so," Kendall replied, frustrated.

The Dino Cupid Charger was the exact same size and shape as every other Dino Charger. Kendall had no idea why it seemed to jam in every morpher it was put into.

It was jammed inside Tyler's morpher this time, as he had used it against the swarm of Vivix Sledge had sent down to Earth in his latest attempt to destroy the rangers. Now that the battle was over, they needed to get it out of his morpher as soon as possible so Tyler could use other chargers when the next attack came.

However, when Kendall tried to pry his morpher open again, three things happened in quick succession.

First, her hand slipped and her pinky finger brushed up against his morpher's trigger.

Second, a blast of pink light shot out from his morpher and hit Tyler square in the chest. He briefly glowed pink and a heart momentarily appeared over his breastbone.

Third, when Kendall looked up at Tyler's face with wide, panicked eyes, she immediately realized that his attention was elsewhere. He was looking away from her, thankfully, but she noticed that he had a small wistful smile on his face. When Kendall followed his gaze, she discovered that he was staring at Shelby, who was working with Riley on a tracking device at the far end of the command center.

"Oh no," Kendall said. The last thing they needed right now was a love-struck ranger, especially so soon after the incident with Chase.

"What?" Tyler asked, turning to face her. He seemed to notice her troubled expression because his eyebrows furrowed with concern. "Are you okay? What happened?"

He sounded like himself, she realized with a start. 

Kendall designed and built the Dino Cupid Charger. She knew how it worked. It forced someone to become infatuated with the first person they laid their eyes on and made it so that they couldn't focus on anything but pleasing that person. As such, she knew that Tyler should be so head-over-heels for Shelby that he shouldn't even be capable of noticing that anyone else existed. 

Yet he was looking Kendall straight in the eye and he sounded like he was worried about _her_ well-being.

"Ms. Morgan?" Tyler asked, still sounding concerned.

Kendall shook her head to clear her thoughts. "How are you feeling, Tyler?" she asked carefully.

"Fine," he replied. "But more importantly, what's going on? You look like something terrible just happened."

Kendall noticed that Tyler's morpher was still in her hand and hastily put it down on her workbench. "You were hit by a blast from the Dino Cupid Charger," she explained. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. My hand slipped, and then..." she gestured towards him.

"I was hit by the Dino Cupid Charger?" he asked, surprised. He looked down at himself and then around the room. "But I feel fine," he told her. "I don't feel like..."

"You're suddenly in love with anyone?" Kendall asked.

"No, I don't feel like that at all," he said. "Are you sure I was hit?"

Kendall knew she hadn't imagined him glowing pink. "Positive," she told him. When he frowned, she added, "It _is_ strange that you aren't acting like you've been affected."

Kendall reached for her laptop and for a scanner. She connected the two and started to set them up so they could detect the Dino Cupid Charger's energy signature.

"Were you the first person I saw?" he asked quietly, after a few minutes.

"No, it was Shelby," she replied, not looking away from her laptop as she finished configuring the scanner. As she worked, she wondered how Shelby would react if she learned that Tyler was hit by the Dino Cupid Charger and that she was the first person he saw.

Kendall thought about the time Shelby had spent two hours searching the site Tyler had battled Fury for Tyler's father's bracelet so she could return it to him. She also thought about the time Shelby's protests about playing a princess ended the second she figured out Tyler would be her prince. Shelby's feelings for Tyler were obvious to Kendall, and she wondered if Shelby would be disappointed to learn that Tyler didn't seem to return them even after being hit by the Dino Cupid Charger. 

Kendall sighed at herself for getting distracted and tried to focus on her work. With a little luck, she'd figure out what was going on with Tyler and clear all the Dino Cupid Charger's energy from his system long before Shelby or anyone else ever found out he was hit.

When her configurations were complete, she said, "Tyler, I need you to place your arm in this scanner."

When he didn't immediately comply, she glanced up at him. He was staring at Shelby again, but this time he was frowning like he thought something was wrong. "Tyler?" she asked.

Tyler startled. "Sorry," he said, his expression clearing. He sat down on the workbench and slid his arm through the scanner. She started the scan, and sure enough, it immediately told her that Tyler's system was filled with high amounts of the Dino Cupid Charger's energy. 

"Your body is registering an energy signature that matches the Dino Cupid Charger," she told him, turning her laptop around so he could see the screen. "You should be following Shelby around like a love-sick puppy right now. I have no idea how you're even able to hold a conversation with me."

Tyler seemed to study the energy read-out for a moment. "When you first gave us the Dino Cupid Charger, you said that it forces whoever it hits to fall in love with the first person they see, right?"

"Yes," Kendall said, not sure where Tyler was going with this.

"Well, about that..." He began fidgeting like he was suddenly uncomfortable and his voice was almost a whisper when he asked, "What if whoever it hits is already in love with the first person they see? It is possible that the Charger won't work on them?"

"I suppose so," Kendall said quickly before she clued in to what Tyler was suggesting. "It's possible that its energy would fail to have an impact on someone if the changes it tried to make were already in place." 

Then she realized _exactly_ what he was suggesting and she felt her mouth fall open. "Oh," she said and considered his theory with renewed interest. If Tyler was, in fact, in love with Shelby before he was hit, that could theoretically explain both the readings she was getting and why Tyler was still acting so much like himself. Though Kendall doubted that any kind of pre-existing feeling could be powerful enough to alter the way the Charger worked.

There was only one way Kendall knew to test Tyler's theory. "I'm going to clear the Dino Cupid Charger's energy from your system. If you still feel the same way afterwards, then it means that what you're feeling right now isn't coming from the Charger."

"It's not," Tyler said, and he sounded sure. "I know it's not."

Kendall was skeptical. She took out the device she had created to help Chase when he had been the one hit, and used it to drain the Dino Cupid Charger's energy from his body. It only took a few minutes for his readings to stabilize. "It's done," she told him, closing her laptop and helping him slide his arm out of the scanner. "How are you feeling?"

Tyler immediately turned to look in Shelby's direction. "The same," he said softly, and when he faced Kendall again, he was grinning. He huffed out a breath that sounded like relief and his eyes looked like they were sparkling when he said, "I still love her."

Kendall felt her throat go dry. She had noticed that Tyler was patient and kind towards Shelby, but she hadn't thought that he liked her the same way that she liked him. Kendall definitely hadn't expected Tyler's feelings for her to have been strong enough to negate the effects of the Dino Cupid Charger. Until now, she hadn't even considered feelings that strong to be _possible_.

As Tyler continued to beam at her, for the first time, Kendall realized that Tyler truly and deeply cared for Shelby in a way she could barely comprehend. 

Feeling stunned, Kendall told him, "Then it appears your theory was correct."

"Yeah," Tyler said, still smiling.

Kendall remembered her earlier thoughts about Shelby and felt the corners of her mouth quirk upwards into an answering smile. She knew now that Shelby would be anything but disheartened when she heard about this.

"Can I tell the others about what we discovered?" Kendall asked Tyler. Since all the rangers used the Dino Cupid Charger, she felt that they all needed to know how it worked, but given the explanation she would have to give, she knew the decision to tell them should be Tyler's.

Tyler's expression immediately sobered. "Do we have to?" he asked. 

"No," she said. "Not right away, at least."

"Can we wait then? Because..." He took a deep breath as if to steady himself. "If she's going to find out, I'd rather tell her how I feel first."

"Alright," Kendall said, and she let herself take a moment to feel happy for Shelby and Tyler and the joy she knew they would find in each other. Then, wanting to get back to work, she carefully picked up Tyler's morpher and reminded him, "The Dino Cupid Charger is still stuck."

"We really need to get that out," Tyler agreed, but before they attempted to force his morpher open again, Kendall made sure its firing mechanism was securely locked so that there wouldn't be any chance of another accident.


End file.
